A MAN has welcomed a court’s decision to lock up a 15-year-old boy who crashed a stolen car through the front of his house – causing £100,000 damage.

The teenager, from Colchester, broke into a house, stole the keys of a black Land Rover Discovery and crashed into Shane Barnham’s semi-detached house in Harwich Road, Colchester.

Mr Barnham, 39, said he still had a gaping hole in the front of his home.

He added: “It has been seven weeks since this happened. We have been on to the insurance people, but nothing has happened – we still have a gaping hole in our home.

“It’s all dark and dingy and it’s getting depressing.

“For what he has done, he needs a custodial sentence – he has caused so much devastation.

“He caused up to £70,000 damage to our house alone and it will all come off the insurance of the poor woman whose car it was.”

As much as £30,000 damage was caused to two cars and by the break-in.

The boy was sentenced to four months for attempted burglary and another ten months, to run consecutively, for the theft of the motor vehicle.

Mr Barnham, a plasterer, said: “It’s more than likely he will only serve half of that, so I hope he realises what he has done.”

Mr Barnham also injured his knee as he rushed downstairs to the aid of his girlfriend Marie after the smash, on May 7, and has been forced to take two weeks off work for an operation.

The teen, who cannot be named because he is under 18, admitted stealing the car after burgling a house in Newbridge Hill, West Bergholt. He then lost control while driving along Harwich Road and skidded off the road into a car and then the house.

Mr Barnham's girlfriend was downstairs at the time, but escaped injury.